"No," Newt says.
His voice is quiet. Steady. The steadiest it has been in weeks.
"Newt..."
"No."
He is off the bed. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't plan it. His body simply moves, carrying him to his feet, and his magic moves with him, and the air in the bedroom shifts. The constellations reappear on the ceiling. Not the gentle, whimsical stars of earlier. These are bright. These are fierce. These burn.
Newt conjures clothes. Just thinks them into existence, the way you think of a word and say it, and he is dressed, t-shirt and trousers and boots, and the ease of it, the effortless perfection of it, is proof of everything Malik has given him and everything Mathilde is trying to take away.
He heads for the door.
"Newt, wait," Malik says, and there is something in his voice that Newt has never heard before. Not command. Not composure. Something raw and unfinished, something that sounds terrified.
"Are you coming?" Newt asks, from the doorway. He doesn't turn around. He doesn't need to.
Behind him, he hears the rustle of Malik pulling on trousers, the soft thud of bare feet on the floor, and then Malik is behind him, and Newt can feel him through the bond, bright andenormous and afraid, and Newt reaches back without looking and takes his hand.
Malik's fingers close around his. Tight.
Together, they walk out the door.
Chapter 18
Malik has lived a long time and he has fulfilled a thousand contracts and he has never wanted anything as much as he wants Newt Hargrove.
This is the thought he carries through the door, down the stairs, out into the grey morning, two steps behind a witch who just conjured clothes from nothing and walked out of the bedroom with the quiet, terrifying certainty of someone who has stopped asking permission. Newt's hand is in his. Newt's grip is tight. Newt is walking fast, his newly conjured boots hitting the cobblestones with a rhythm that is all purpose and no hesitation, and his red hair is loose around his shoulders because Malik has his leather tie and Malik is not giving it back.
Malik knows where they're going. He doesn't ask. He doesn't need to.
Part of him, the part that has survived centuries by calculating odds and managing risk, knows he should say something. Should tell Newt that this is a bad idea. Should explain that Malik cannot go against Mathilde directly, that the original contract binds him, that he is physically, magically,contractually incapable of raising a hand against the woman who holds his binding. Should tell him that storming the Hargrove estate with a half-dressed incubus and a bellyful of rage is not a strategy, it's a tantrum, and tantrums do not historically end well for the people throwing them.
He doesn't say any of it.
Because the other part of him, the part that is newer and rawer and doesn't know its own name yet, wants Newt to fight for this. Wants to fight for this. Doesn't want to give up until the chains are back around his wrists and he's back inside the portal and there is nothing left to do but go. He saidI want youten minutes ago and the words are still reverberating in his chest, still ringing through the bond between them, and he is not going to take them back. He is not going to unsay the truest thing he's ever said just because the world has decided it doesn't matter.
They walk through Haven in the early morning. The streets are quiet. Shopkeepers are opening doors. A woman walking a dog gives them a wide berth, and Malik doesn't know if that's because of the horns or the expression on Newt's face or the fact that the air around them is crackling with something that makes the streetlamps flicker as they pass.
The Hargrove estate rises at the end of the lane, old stone and dark windows, and Newt does not slow down. He walks straight up to the front door and the door does not open for him because the door is locked and warded and reinforced with a century of protective magic.
Newt doesn't touch it. He doesn't raise a hand. He doesn't speak an incantation. The door cracks off its hinges and swings inward with a sound like breaking teeth, and the ward that was protecting it dissolves like smoke in a wind, and Newt walks through the opening without breaking stride.
Malik follows.
The corridors of the Hargrove estate are full of people who suddenly find other places to be. Coven members pressing themselves against walls, ducking into rooms, averting their eyes. Malik recognizes some of them. The witch who delivered the summons. A young conjurer who once sneered at Newt across a hallway. They are not sneering now. They are watching the small red-haired figure striding through their halls with something that is not quite fear and not quite awe and is somewhere very uncomfortable between the two.
Annabeth is in the corridor outside Mathilde's study. She sees them coming. She looks at Newt, at the set of his jaw and the loose hair and the magic crackling around him in visible arcs, and she looks at Malik behind him, and her sharp features do something complicated.
She steps aside.
She doesn't try to stop them. She doesn't raise a hand or speak a word of warning. She simply moves out of the way, pressing her back against the wall, and watches them pass with an expression that Malik files away for later examination. It is not betrayal of Mathilde, and it's not necessarily loyalty to Newt, but it's notnoteither of those things either. Malik recognizes ambition when he sees it and Annabeth, who has done her mother's bidding her entire life with probably little gratitude, is brimming with it.
Newt finds Mathilde's study. He does not knock. He does not pause. The door opens the way the front door opened, cracking at the frame, swinging inward, and Newt walks through and Malik follows and the door slams shut behind them without anyone touching it.
Mathilde is at her desk.
She looks the same. She always looks the same. Ancient and sharp and sustained by magic that should not be sustaining her, and she looks up from her papers as they enter with anexpression of such controlled displeasure that it barely registers as a reaction at all. She is not surprised. She is not frightened. She looks at Newt the way she has always looked at Newt, with the patient, assessing gaze of a woman examining a tool that has not performed as expected.
